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Floods in Pakistan and the Importance of Natural Security

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned in my time at CNAS working with the Natural Security team, it’s that climate events and natural disasters around the world (along with issues of natural resources, bio-diversity and energy resources) are having an increasingly important impact on US national security issues. The floods in Pakistan are a prime example of one of these issues that defies the traditional boundaries of security studies, and provides an example of the ways that traditional conceptions of what constitutes a threat to the United States will have to evolve to match the increasingly tangled and complex nature and overwhelming scope of these new issues.

A Pew poll from July 2010 found that “the image of the United States remains overwhelmingly negative in Pakistan.” Fewer than 17 percent of Pakistanis have a favourable opinion of the United States, and 56 percent oppose US-led efforts to fight terrorism there. More worryingly, 84 percent of Pakistanis consider China a partner of their country and 85 percent have a favourable opinion of China.

Thus, many in the US government argue that the damage from the floods also presents an opportunity for the United States by giving it an opportunity to increase Pakistani opinions of partnership with the United States and US efforts to defeat terrorism there. The Pew poll found that 26 percent of Pakistanis believe that the United States gives Pakistan hardly any aid money, and 22 percent say that the US gives only a little. Furthermore, of those who responded that the US gives at least some assistance to Pakistan, “about an equal number say US aid is mostly for military purposes as say it is mostly for economic development or for both equally.” So far, the United States has pledged aid worth 90 million dollars and deployed 18 army helicopters for humanitarian assistance. The intent of this aid is presumably not only to assist the people of Pakistan through a crisis but also to demonstrate US support for Pakistanis. Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah recently wrote on USAID’s blog that “the United States intends to show itself as a friend and committed partner of Pakistan for many years to come.

Ironically, there’s also a danger that US aid could contribute to long-term instability by highlighting the fact that the Pakistani government has been unable or unwilling to respond to the fallout of the floods in a proportionate way. President Zardari’s trip to the UK at the beginning of the monsoon flooding only seemed to highlight the government’s seeming indifference to the plight of ordinary Pakistanis, even as Islamist charities began to fill the humanitarian aid vacuum left by the government.

For me, this dilemma and the many other complex issues that accompany the flood highlights why it is so important for government officials, academics and other policymakers to study natural security issues now, so that when catastrophic natural disasters and conflicts over dwindling natural resources do pose a threat to US national security, as well as the quality of life of billions globally, as they will all too often in the future, US policymakers will be prepared.